Staying on course: amid tough times, maintenance digs in.

With most jobs, thankfully, perfection isn't expected. For today's golf course superintendent, it is.

Or so it seems. Golfers of the 21st Century routinely expect razored, manicured, calibrated, verdant playing conditions that virtually defy climate and region.

That goes double

"People want tournament conditions every time they play," says Ken Mangum, CGCS, golf course maintenance director for the Atlanta Athletic Club.

Never mind that these stratospheric standards have evolved just as the means to support them have plummeted: rounds are down, reports the National Golf Foundation. Competition by new courses is up. Revenues have cratered. Budgets are squeezed.

Nor has Mother Nature helped, dishing up large helpings of drought, cold, and flooding throughout the Northeast and Midwest the last few years.

In the crosshairs of these forces are the course superintendents, who are responsible for a club's greatest--and most visible--investment.

Protecting that investment demands more savvy, education, and innovation than ever. And while technology and science have helped, a superintendent's greatest asset is still between the ears.

From Sprinklers to Satellites

The challenge of course maintenance has changed a bit in the 150 years since five golf clubs got together and dispatched Tom Morris "to make holes, look after the flags, and mend the turf" at their operations.

Power mowers replaced grazing farm animals, and maintenance budgets grew past the $33 Morris got. Yet, the basics of "greenkeeping"--the processes, the tools, and the job description--remained fairly constant for more than a century. (At least one task noted in 1906--"read the riot act to small boys who play off the greens"--didn't change at all.)

But the basics were blistered in the 1980s when golf went global on the wings of jets, new media, and--above all--TV exposure. Suddenly, executive travel included stops at the world's finest courses, and television beamed the creme de la creme to every living room, creating a world-class lust for the lush.

In swooped science and technology, shocking the maintenance world of old with the gadgetry of tomorrow. In one generation, sprinklers and bug bombs gave way to satellites and Palm Pilots.

Today, technology has produced satellite-controlled irrigation systems and laser-enhanced maintenance equipment of dizzying applications. Course design, drainage, and construction methods boast cutting-edge engineering. Research has yielded sturdier grasses, better fertilizers, safer pesticides, and smarter sprayers than ever before.

Raising the Bar

And yet, rather than satisfying expectations, each advance has only driven them higher.

"People are now shopping based on course conditions," says Jeff Bollig, director of communications at the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA).

Even design has taken a back seat to maintenance, golf course architect Michael Hurdzan says.

"Given the choice between a well-designed course and a poorly maintained one, or a poorly designed and well-maintained one, the golfer will nearly always choose the better maintained," Hurdzan told GCSAA.

"Maintenance often has a greater influence than design on a course's difficulty and speed of play."

Pat Finlen is among veteran superintendents who have had a front-row seat at the maintenance revolution.

"I think the definition of perfection has changed," says Finlen, CGCS, director of golf course maintenance operations at San Francisco's Olympic Club, whose Lake Course has been the site of several U.S. Opens.

"Fifteen years ago, it meant that the greens were nice. Now it means that the approaches and the green surrounds call on a daily basis for perfection."

Mangum agrees. The Georgia club's course conditions are "better on our worst day than the major championships were" in the 1980s.

The spiraling tools, technology, and player expectations have also swept in course superintendents, who constantly compete--with themselves and each other--to raise the maintenance bar.

"People expect more everywhere in life," says Finlen. On a club course, those expectations "also come from the fact that we can provide it for them."

Indeed, today's greens are lightning fast; some are routinely mowed below 1/10 of an inch. Bunkers are raked to silky smoothness. Roughs must be irrigated, for Pete's sake, and free of weeds--demands that no superintendent dreamed of 20 years ago.

Keeping It Green

Meeting these demands has been neither easy nor cheap. As stewards of a course's biggest expense in tough economic times, superintendents have had to become bottom-line savvy.

While maintenance budgets have generally increased in recent years, each increase has been tagged with an additional responsibility. Superintendents interviewed for this article defended their budgets as adequate. But the flush days of the '90s are clearly long gone. Many budgets are flat, and some have been cut.

Meanwhile, science and technology may be producing a better product, but beauty's price is steep: A new mower can easily cost more than $20,000; a new irrigation system for a single course more than a million dollars.

And modernity still has no alternatives for many, many jobs that must be done by hand. Just one cart path, for example, may require five miles of trimming.

"Everything we do is labor-intensive," says Mangum. Boards "have to decide if it's worth a quarter-million dollars extra to hand-rake bunkers, or $100,000 to pick up pine cones."

For some boards, the answer is no. "I've had lots of friends face decreases of 10 percent," says Bob Randquist, director of golf course operations at Boca Rio Golf Club in Boca Raton. Hit hardest, he adds, is manpower.

Other clubs are balancing their maintenance on the backs of other budgets--cutting travel, reducing trade-show appearances, or delaying improvement projects. But even those savings can't bridge the whole gap.

In this climate, superintendents say, it's not enough to work hard. They must work smart.

What helps?

Communication. "The minute you start saying 'my golf course,' it's the end of the road," said Steve Cook, CGCS, golf course manager at Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield, MI.

The fact is, notes Cook, it's the members' course--and woe to those who forget it. Member priorities must be maintenance priorities.

"You have to be in constant communication with the everyday member, to keep touch with that undercurrent: What are they happy with? What are they not happy with?" advises Cook.

At the historic Chevy Chase Club, superintendent Dean Graves, CGCS, recalls his one-time personal obsession with keeping greens fast and fairways tight--only to learn that older members and female members actually preferred higher greens and more leeway on their drives.

Other superintendents, Graves adds, "think they have to have a disease-free golf course"--an item he thinks few members notice. "But they do notice that the bunkers are messed up."

His advice: "You have to be actively involved with your membership. And if they don't tell you their priorities, you have to ask."

Superintendents must also keep in touch up the line. Educating boards and managers about maintenance is a big part of the job.

"We give people a menu of what we need to do," says Mangum. "They have to understand what it takes to do each job."

Research. Whether or not they realize it, today's golfers tread on a tremendous variety of revolutionary grasses.

Much of this sturdy turf has been developed through research funded by the USGA's Turfgrass and Environmental Research Program, which has invested $21 million over the last decade in projects geared toward improving playing conditions.

The research has focused on course construction practices, integrated turfgrass management, turfgrass germplasm enhancement, environmental impact, and sustainable land use.

The turfgrass initiatives have produced grasses that better withstand environmental stresses and use less fertilizer, pesticide, and water. Among the most promising, researchers say, are creeping bentgrass, bermudagrass, native grasses, seashore paspalum, and zoysiagrass.

The maintenance payoff from these can be huge: Atlanta Athletic Club will nearly halve its mowing schedule when it rebuilds 18 of its holes this year with new strains of turfgrass, Mangum reports.

Turf management has also become more efficient science than clumsy art. No longer does a superintendent ring up a buddy to speculate over a mystery growth along a fairway. Now the patch is sent to a lab and diagnosed quickly and accurately.

Quality construction. Good maintenance begins with good construction--or good reconstruction, in the case of older courses.

Greens nationwide are being rebuilt in record numbers as older courses take a pounding their builders never expected, the USGA reports.

Green construction packs a huge budgetary wallop--$4 to $7 per square foot over about 7,000 square feet, the USGA estimates. But if well constructed and built according to USGA guidelines, a new green can last "indefinitely," the organization said.

Technology. Yes, the cost can be breathtaking--but so can the results.

Irrigation management once meant cannon-like saturation of every single item within hose range. Now, computers can program, calibrate, and direct thousands of sprinkler heads toward individual plants along a course within five minutes.

The result: Clubs can irrigate larger areas with more precision and less water.

Like many superintendents, Cook dragged sprinklers around fairways when he began his career in 1986.

"Now, you can do it with a Palm Pilot out in the field. Or, if I wanted to, I could irrigate the course from my laptop at home. And that is really amazing."

Education. The superintendent's job has changed dramatically since today's veterans got their start. The only way to keep up, they say, is education.

A four-year degree--once a novelty--is now just the start for a superintendent. Continuing education is an absolute must.

"In a golf course superintendent's career, the half-life of information is three years," said Dean Graves, a 1982 graduate of Pennsylvania State University.

"Half the diseases I learned at Penn State have become recategorized. If we don't completely re-educate ourselves every six years, we know nothing."

Superintendents praise the ever-tougher curriculum demanded for CGCS certification by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA). Graves earned his CGCS in February and is already pursuing a Master Greenkeeper Certificate through the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association (BIGGA).

"You cannot become complacent," he said.

The education push is driven not just by science and competition from hungry young graduates. The larger issue is a role that is constantly being redefined. When Cook was a rookie, "you were definitely more of a grass grower. Today, you're much more of a manager, coach, leader, and director. Only about 20 percent of my time now involves growing grass or agronomy."

Says Finlen, himself a business grad: "The agronomic part will always be there, but those who succeed will have a good sense of business environment as well."

Outsourcing

Education may also help a superintendent fend off another threat: a takeover by a maintenance management firm.

While such firms have made in-roads on the municipal market, they're finding the club market tougher to crack. The number of GCSAA members who work for maintenance firms has declined to about 13 percent since 2001.

Outside maintenance management "is still a niche market," says former superintendent Greg Plotner, CGCS, vice president of International Golf Maintenance. "We've not experienced as large a growth as we'd hoped. There's still a fear factor there."

The firms, newcomers in the 1990s, say they can provide course operators with economies of scale, insurance coverage, sophisticated equipment, and expertise that an in-house operation can't touch--and do it all by cutting a single check.

"We understand that golf is a business these days," says Plotner. "We can stretch a dollar."

And yet, outsourcing has been a tough sell to clubs, where boards, committees, agendas, and opinions all shift constantly. "The education process," he says, "is never-ending."

Curiously, Plotner adds, if an outsider does take over maintenance and performs well, a board may then think, "Why can't we do that?" and bring the operation back in-house.

While not openly critical of maintenance firms, club superintendents say the concept is simply not a good fit for their industry.

Those interviewed for this article insist that their clubs--and all their previous clubs--have never even discussed outsourcing.

"If you have the right people in place, you don't need a management company," says Mangum. "You're adding another profit center any time you bring in another company. They have to make up their costs somewhere."

More important, say superintendents, is the care and attention that boards and club members demand. Establishing and nurturing those relationships must be done personally and constantly, they say.

Relationships are far less of an issue when a course owner or city manager is paying the bills.

Still, even if maintenance firms are not working directly for clubs, they are improving those operations. Clearly, club superintendents feel their presence.

"I need to say, 'If a management company came in here, what would they look at? Where would they look to economize and be more efficient?'" Oakland Hills' Cook said.

"Our responsibility should be to do a better job of communicating and to be proactive," he added. "We have definitely been asked to justify what we're doing more than we were three or four years ago.

"And I think that's been a healthy process."

RELATED ARTICLE: A living golf course lab.

by Mary E. Chollet

There are turkeys in the lab at Pursell Farm Technologies Inc.

Not scientists disliked by their colleagues--real gobblers. Deer and catfish, too.

Oh, and golfers--hundreds of golfers--exploring the grief and glory of 18 championship holes across streams, forests, and meadows in the Alabama sunshine.

This is a fertilizer laboratory?

Welcome to FarmLinks at Pursell Farms, an innovative "living laboratory" and research site developed by PTI Inc., developers and manufacturers of Polyon and Trikote fertilizers.

The 7,444-yard FarmLinks course opened in June on PTI's historic 3,500-acre Pursell Farms property. And in an age where first has become a tough title to earn, FarmLinks seems to have nailed a claim.

"It's a one-of-a-kind in the golf industry, certainly--and maybe in any industry," says PTI spokeswoman Mary Beth VanLandingham.

FarmLinks is the brainchild of PTI CEO David Pursell. For years, PTI had showcased new products with the PTI Tour, which drew more than 1,000 course superintendents, agronomists, and students annually.

A few years ago, Pursell had an inspiration: Why not show PTI's pride in action? A lavishly landscaped, fully operating golf course would be the ultimate customer showroom.

More important, it would provide the ultimate setting for in-house research and development.

"We wanted to be able to demonstrate our fertilizer products on a piece of ground that we completely control," explained Pursell.

But Pursell took his inspiration a step further: Wouldn't other manufacturers of golf-related products find their own real-life test site equally useful?

His first call, to The Toro Company, was a home run. The landscape maintenance giant would provide equipment and irrigation systems to FarmLinks.

The next call went to ClubCar. The world's leading golf-car company jumped at the opportunity, agreeing to provide golf cars, recreational transportation, and maintenance vehicles.

"It was just a natural fit. Our company cultures and approach to business are very similar," said Pursell.

Enthusiasm for the project ignited across the country.

Syngenta, of North Carolina, agreed to supply the materials for a comprehensive integrated pesticide program. Flowtronex PSI, of Dallas, signed on for a waterfall pumping system. Iowa's Standard Golf Co. would provide ball washers, flags, rakes, water coolers, and other accessories.

There would be sod by Turfgrass America. Fans by Precision Products of Florida. Spreaders by Adams Fertilizer Equipment of Arkansas. Drainage systems by Ring LP of Tennessee. Special soil by Profile Products of Illinois.

By the time the course opened, FarmLinks had a dozen partners. And the lab even had its first new venture: a PTI-Syngenta partnership to develop slow-release pesticides.

PTI calls FarmLinks "a unique situation where companies with similar values come together with the same end goals--to educate and be educated by their customers."

With their rounds, visitors are promised product and research demonstrations as well as introductions to prototypes that may be years from the market. FarmLinks' suppliers expect the immediate feedback under real-life conditions to provide a gold mine of information.

The clubhouse at FarmLinks is still under construction, but the course is open to the public on a limited-play basis. A First Tee golf learning facility for kids is in the works. The course will also host tournaments and plans a college internship program.

"With the help of our partners," says Pursell, "everyone in the sport can potentially benefit from FarmLinks."